Daily Prayer

Sunday, 31 August 2008

Paul writes – During 2007 God Next Door: Spirituality & Mission in the Neighbourhoodby Simon Carey Holt was born. It’s an excellent book, one in which Simon explores neighbourhoods, neighbourhoods and the call of God, and neighbourhoods and mission. This last section is particularly energizing, focusing as it does on “neighbourhoods and mission: disciplines [and practicalities] of engagement”. There are some reviews of the book here.

If my sources are correct, the book is to be published in the US by Allelon.

On July 16th 2008, I left the following as a comment for Simon when his book was included in the finalists: “Congratulations Simon. Better start preparing your acceptance speech.”

“God Next Door” brings to life Jesus’ command to “love your neighbour as yourself” and explains how living Jesus’ words will transform neighbourhoods. It is a timely and necessary challenge to all Australian Christians who are busy “doing church” and to churches where a program-focus may have inadvertently dulled ideas of mission. It shows how to understand Jesus’ call on your life regardless of your context.

Holt shares practical wisdom on the “how to” of engaging neighbours and neighbourhoods, by thinking about the distinctives of one’s own neighbourhood. He demonstrates the value of reclaiming the neighbourhood, in an era in which we retreat into homes with large TVs and small front yards. He shows a sound knowledge of typical Australian neighbourhoods and puts compellingly Jesus’ call to mission in our own local neighbourhood.

“God Next Door” is a book which will provoke action: one judge found it life-changing! It is a book which churches could explore together with a view to living like Jesus in their neighbourhood.

Readers will gain a better understanding of their surroundings, a higher degree of engagement with their neighbours and a more authentic mission, by bringing Christianity and Jesus out of the church building and into the neighbourhood."

Saturday, 30 August 2008

Paul writes – I’ve listened and re-listened to an excellent 2008 Greenbelt talk that Dave Tomlinson (author of the very useful The Post-Evangelical (1995 / Revised US edition 2003). You can order the talk here. This is how it was promoted:

“…Introducing his new book Re-enchanting Christianity, Dave explores how Christianity, once deconstructed, can become credible again - not by returning to some lost innocence, but by discovering a realistic faith that reconciles heart and head: which grapples courageously with questions about life after death, hell, the resurrection, other faiths etc, but also offers a gritty spirituality for the 21st century…”

Dave talks of the Post-Evangelical as about his dis-enchantment with church (and Christianity) and his new book as about his “re-enchantment”. The new book is still not out in the UK (though publication date was the 29th August 2008). You can preorder it here (UK) or here (US / 30 Nov. 2008). If its anything like the talk then my early sense is that it will be a very useful book for a great many of us with more questions than answers, and for those of us struggling either in church contexts, or like me, post-church and wondering what church, moving forward, might look and feel like.

Here’s an excerpt (great quote from Lenny Bruce!), much of it forms part of the talk highlighted above.

“Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.”Lenny Bruce

“…People are no less spiritual today than they were in the past, but they are a lot less religious. A disconnect has occurred between religion and spirituality: people no longer see religion or church as the natural setting in which to explore or express their spiritual aspirations. So they are drifting away from churches in droves. However they are not doing so because they no longer believe in God, or because they have no spiritual hunger, but because in their experience church is neither offering a faith they can believe in, nor an existential spirituality that can excite or satisfy the deeper yearnings of the soul. Many long to reconnect with the sacred mystery of life, to discover their place in the cosmos, but they don’t see church or religion as a way of achieving this…I see no future in the twenty-first century for expressions of Christianity that are not Spirited. Our world longs for numinosity: for a sense of awe and mystery, for sacredness, spirituality and enchantment, for something ‘more’ than the purely rational and cerebral. If the church fails to engage with, and cater to, this longing, it has no real future…”

Some (written) content from the talk can also be found in sections of this article…

Thursday, 28 August 2008

Paul writes – I’ve recently finished reading an essay by Robert W. Jenson, What is a Post-Christian (included in this interesting collection of essays) in which he argues that in a post-Church / post-Christian (I’d say “post-Christendom”) context the invitation of the Church is to uphold and embody its distinctive beliefs. In many ways his argument is not dissimilar from the likes of Stanley Hauerwas.

Jenson writes:

“We … need to face [the] fact often spoken of but rarely acted upon: that the West is now a mission field. We can no longer count on the culture doing half our work for us. On a mission field, the church has to do its own work, and that means first of all that it has to know what is not … in the culture, that it hopes to bring to it. Which is to say: it must know and cultivate its difference from that culture. All that talk a few years ago about the world setting the agenda, about seeing where God was at work in the world and jumping in to help etc, was the last gasp of the church’s establishment in the West, of its erstwhile ability to suppose that what the culture nurtured as good had to be congruent with the good the church had to bring…” (Pp. 29-30).

The first thing that strikes me in this quote is what on the surface seems like a critique of a popular definition of mission which goes like this: “mission is discerning what it is that God is doing and joining in”; it’s a way of talking about mission that prioriterises what God is doing and its an invitation to partnership and collaboration.Is this what Jenson is critiquing? A reading of the preceding and following paragraphs doesn’t really help!

Wednesday, 27 August 2008

Paul writes – Great little quote from David Bosch. It, unlike a lot of contemporary approaches to talking about “evangelism” has a note of hopefulness and “good news” about it…

“…Evangelism means enlisting people for the reign of God, liberating them from themselves, their sins, and their entanglements, so that they will be free for God and neighbour…. To win people to Jesus is to win their allegiance to God's priorities. God wills …that within us, and through our ministry also in society around us, the "fullness of Christ" be re-created, the image of God be restored in our lives and relationships…”

Tuesday, 26 August 2008

Paul writes – Andrew Perriman, is the author of the very engaging Re:Mission – Biblical Mission for a Post-Biblical Church (I really appreciate it’s willingness to engage and enter into the Biblical narrative – too much so-called “emerging” or “missional” literature functions at the level of strategy, cultural engagement , and the sociological / philosophical discussion (no in themselves bad things) and any engagement with the Biblical narrative and specific biblical texts is incidental and peripheral. I highly recommend it Re:Mission).

Anyway, Andrew is interviewed by Darren King for Precipice Magazine.com. It has in view one of Andrew’s earlier books. Re:Missionwas published in late 2007.Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

“…One of the hallmarks of the Emerging Church is its desire, it commitment, to move beyond traditionalism, to examine various aspects of Christian faith with an openness to new answers- and new questions. While critics often (unfairly) accuse the movement of "rejecting the Bible", the reality is that those immersed within the EC conversation are often willing to embrace the complexities of the Bible in ways that are unfamiliar to others. And embracing the Bible means entering into the story, understanding the journey as it was for the earliest believers, as part of the process in receiving it as our own…

…I think that a new way of understanding ourselves as church is emerging from the collapse of the Christendom mindset. Whether or not we refer to that as the ‘emerging church’ or imagine that it amounts to a well-defined movement, it needs a congruent theology; and I believe that that theology needs to be confidently and consistently biblical. What we mean by ‘biblical’, of course, is another matter – that’s the third part.

… I think that the basic ‘theological’ challenge we face is, on the one hand, to disentangle our minds from the dilapidated mental infrastructure of Christendom, and on the other, to design for ourselves a new post-Christendom infrastructure. It’s as though the house in which we have lived for the last 1600 years has collapsed – it was too badly built to withstand the storms of rationalism and floods of postmodernism. So we are currently homeless and somewhat bewildered and frightened. Most of us are living in makeshift shelters constructed from stuff we have salvaged from the wreckage. We need to build a new worldview, a new plausibility structure, a new theological paradigm, within which to be a meaningful and sustainable missional community. That will be a long and difficult task.

… I think we need to grasp again how scripture engages realistically with the experience in time of a historical community. Scripture is the work of a people making sense of its past, present and future at different stages in a narrative; and if we fail to take into account either the historical experience of the community or the narrative structure of its self-understanding, we are bound to misinterpret.

Monday, 25 August 2008

Paul writes – While I’m not a fan of the cover and title, my birthday present this November will be a biography.

“…Rowan Williams is a complex and controversial figure. Widely revered for his personal qualities, he is also an intellectual giant who towers over almost all his predecessors as Archbishop of Canterbury. Yet he is also one of the most reviled church leaders in modern history. Long before facing calls to step down after his lecture on sharia law in 2008, he had been accused of heresy on account of his pro-gay views. He has disappointed many of his own supporters as well. So how has high office changed Rowan Williams? Has he been bullied and manipulated? Or is he perhaps playing a long game, obliged to rate church unity above the pursuit of his own vision at a time when the Anglican Communion has looked ever more unstable? Rupert Shortt, already the author of an acclaimed introduction to the Archbishop's thought, now offers answers to these and other questions in this authoritative biography. Written with Rowan Williams's full cooperation, it not only elucidates his ideas, but gives a compelling portrait of a private and in some ways surprisingly vulnerable man…”

Saturday, 23 August 2008

Paul writes – Fr. Richard Rohr has appreciatively acknowledged (not uncritically) the insights and wisdom present in the work and life of Eckhart Tolle. To the point that Rohr made this comment I’d seen Tolle’s books, but hadn’t read anything by him. Tolle, I’ve since discovered, is an interesting person, and there’s much to engage with in his understanding of what it means to be (fully)human, (fully)alive, and (fully) presentand attentive in the ordinary and the everyday.

Tolle shouldn’t be engaged with from within the Christian tradition, uncritically, but Tolle should be engaged. Much, it seems to me, of the church-going tradition is concerned with right-thinking (hence the centrality of the sermon and the prioriterising of right-belief (doctrine etc). More latterly there appears a swing back toward incarnation and praxis (orthopraxy – how we live; how we work out our faith). This is a needfull counterbalance and emphasis.

But equally needful is an emphasis (most commonly seen in contemporary (some might say “Western” Buddhism – thinking here of people like Jack Kornfield) on what I term “Christian orthopathy” – heart work; the inner work (and practices that encourage this) that nurture, nourish, and open us to the inner work of the Spirit and inner transformation.

Tolle’s most recent work, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose,is a good example of trying to emphasise the needful relationship between orthopathy and orthopraxis. (“According to Tolle, humans are on the verge of creating a new world by a personal transformation that shifts our attention away from our ever-expanding egos…” In other words, inner transformation is evidenced in how we live in relation to self, others, and all of Creation. We make change in the world possible, one person at a time!).

Listening through an interest in orthopathy and orthopraxis, I found a recent interview of Tolle by Krista Tippert (‘Speaking of Faith’) very helpful.

Friday, 22 August 2008

Paul writes – Jonny Baker also picks up on what I think is a very good little interview with Barry Taylor. The interviewer is Ian Mobsby (who wants to come to NZ in November 2008 – provided Cambridge is included, is there anyone who’d want to share the costs?) whose latest book (The Becoming of G-d) looks really interesting, though I have yet to get it off my bookshelf and read it. Barry’s latest book is Entertainment Theology: New Edge Spirituality in a Digital Democracy.It’s on its way to me, and from what I’ve seen it’s going to be a very useful read especially for those of us in post-Church contexts wondering about the relationship between gospel, Spirit, cultural engagement and the everyday, what it means to be “church”, and the absence of a meaningful and humble Christian voice (and presence) in the public arena, whether that be in the workplace, in leadership, in our local communities, neighborhoods etc

Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

“…As you know, some research published in the last 5 years has suggested that there is no residual spirituality within contemporary culture. This research draws on interviews of younger people leaving a nightclub. They argue that what is needed is not an engagement with new/old forms of mysticism, but more of a proclamation of Christianity ­ does your research have something to say to this research which has been quite influential in some places in the UK?

Yeah, I read a lot about that--Unfortunately, I think the research was a bit weak, or at least a bit myopic. For one thing, I think they were asking the wrong questions. There is no easy way to say this--the questions were too loaded and 'too Christian'--I don't mean to attack the validity of the project as much as to challenge the approach--the spirituality that exists in digital culture tends not to look familiar to some who orient their lives in more formal or traditional understandings of spirituality, or who enter situations with pre-conceived ideas about what is going on--I think we have entered, or are entering, a new phase of religious/spiritual self-understanding and what is emerging doesn't look like what has gone before. As many others have noted, the return to God--the re-enchantment of the West, as some term it, that has occurred over the past few years, is not necessarily a return to old ways or old gods or concepts of God.

Wednesday, 20 August 2008

Paul writes – One of the really significant events of 2006/07 was my participation in, and completion of an 18-month Spiritual Director training programme. It was a wonderful mix of practical work (in respect of “self” and directee) and theory. Spiritual direction is about the Spirit in Mission, “mission” in its fullest sense as having to do with shalom and fullness of life.

In terms of theory, and in case others are thinking about and discerning an invitation to become spiritual directors, I thought I’d list books that were important to me during the course, and books which I keep coming back to.

Friday, 15 August 2008

Paul writes – I recently listened to a short but interesting interview (just over 30 mins) with Beth Maynard, co-editor of the excellent collection of thoughtful and evocative sermons which draw from the preachers encounters with U2 and their songs. This book will appeal to fans of U2, students of homiletics, and everyone interested in the intersection of art, popular culture, and religion…” I highly recommend it. The book was previously mentioned on this blog here.

“…Eugene Peterson asks “Is U2 a prophetic voice?” in the [wonderful] forward of Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog. In this Dick Staub interview, author Beth Maynard answers the questions in the affirmative in a provocative discussion about U2’s lyrical relevance for today’s spiritual seeker and finder…”